


The 5 Times Bentina Beakley Had To Fix Up Her Employer And The One Time She Didn't

by SilverFliesInBlueSugar



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Blood and Injury, Gen, Happy Ending, Hortense McDuck FOWL Theory, Hurt/Comfort, Promises, Recovery, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverFliesInBlueSugar/pseuds/SilverFliesInBlueSugar
Summary: Scrooge McDuck has always had a strange proclivity toward getting himself injured, and who else to clean him up at the end than his fellow-agent-turned-housekeeper? She isn't exactly happy about it, though.
Relationships: Bentina Beakley & Scrooge McDuck, Della Duck & Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck & Scrooge McDuck
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	1. Agent 22 and Agent McDuck

Scrooge McDuck had been one of the most infuriating freelance operatives Bentina Beakley had ever had the displeasure of working with. Not that she'd had to work with many before - thankfully most of her team-ups were with equally skilled and experienced agents or spies who barely spoke and mostly seemed to want to just get the mission done as soon as possible and then never speak to her again. Which was fine with her; no messy ends, no possible conflicts, no weird tension. Just how she liked it.

Scrooge had made his personality abundantly clear within seconds of their meeting. Despite his age being notably higher than hers, both physically and _especially_ chronologically, he had more energy than most teenagers she had (unfortunately) been acquainted with. He was ostentatious, insubordinate, unprofessional, and most of all his famed miserliness shone through at the auction. So much so that it substantially endangered their odds. The idiot.

 _'I just saved SHUSH a lot of money, you are welcome!'_ indeed. She had clocked him in the face for that one to shut him up.

He had landed with absolutely no grace at the beach, and she'd had to privately admit that she found it amusing as he skidded across the sand. Of course, she didn't allow it to show on her face and simply rattled off the instructed protocol. Do not arouse suspicion. She somehow doubted he would be capable of abiding by that.

Despite his clear substantial self worth, he was frighteningly dangerous with his own well-being. She'd had to pull a risky maneuvre to stop the island's protector from electrocuting him into ash, and then watched, beak agape, as he cheerily consumed what could have very well been a poisoned berry. He had been fine, but what would he have done if he wasn't? Had he expected her to somehow save him? Fat chance. 

"What is WRONG with you?!" She had snapped, exasperated, unable to prevent herself from breaking professionalism. "There are RULES! PROTOCOL!"

"Loosen up 22! You gotta be willing to make things up as ye go along - i didn't get this far in life by following the rules!" and then he was choking. She liked to personally dub it 'literally choking on his own words'.

And then he had let loose a _battle cry_ when they headed into the cave, sending a cavalcade of robots at them. Fantastic. The idiot even managed to let one escape in the end. Great. She hoped that wouldn't come back to bite them in the ass later.

Losing sight of him and being shot with a burst of green smoke certainly hadn't been part of the plan, and she found herself next awake strapped upside down, watching that bitch Black Heron monologue to a camera. She was all too eager to ruin it by cutting her off.

Obviously Scrooge had completely ruined his element of surprise by announcing his presence in the room almost immediately, laughing at Heron for her bounce serum, locking the two in a verbal back and forth that was clearly infuriating the villain. And then the verbal became physical, and she had to admit that she was a little impressed by how much of a beating he could take and how much he was able to hold up his own end. Still, she'd had to break protocol to help him, and thankfully ultimately drive Heron off. Honestly, she was starting to warm up to him a little at the end of it all. 

He had been pretty noticeably bashed up by the fight he'd had. Not enough that he'd need too much attention, but she had made him sit down so she would fix up a few of the nastier scrapes and tears from where Heron had jabbed at him with her beak or thrown him down. He had winced and hissed as she pulled out her tiny bottle of antiseptic to apply, and she had chuckled a little as she pulled back. "I feel as though i'm attending to a child."

"Now now 22, i'm old enough to be your grandfather" he had grinned. 

"Well, agent McDuck, you seem to have a rather low pain tolerance"

"Please - call me Scrooge"

Her expression had lit up with slight surprise. "Hm, alright. Bentina Beakley. I have a feeling i'll have to clean up a lot of your messes from now on"

He grinned and shook her hand, wincing a little as the scrapes on his arm smarted. "Pleased to have made your acquaintance"

She hadn't known just how right she was.


	2. Hortense McDuck

It had been nearly a week since his sister's death, and Scrooge hadn't left his room for even a second - at least not that she had been made aware of. The plates of food she and Duckworth left for him outside of his door remained untouched, and any attempts to talk to him were met with silence or an order to leave.

It was clearly taking such a toll on him that he wasn't coping at all, unable to do anything but shut himself away and hide from everything. She had never seen him so devastated before, even when she had told him that an old business partner he had been awfully fond of had passed of old age. The grief hadn't been remotely comparable to the seemingly all encompassing nature of the one he experienced now. Several days in, she began to worry that if she didn't act soon that he would rot in there. At least the bathroom attached to his room would have been providing him with plenty of water.

The children had barely been coping, either. Donald had emotionally retreated entirely, never smiling, snapping easier, hardly even speaking to his twin. Della just seemed unbearably angry and confused, coming to terms with the fact that the man that had killed her mother would now be acting as their substitute parent, with their real father MIA. All they really had now was each other, though at least they did leave their rooms still. She knew that they perhaps couldn't help but blame Scrooge a little, but she hopes that blame would leave with reason and time.

It was such an awful realization to see Hortense emerge from that vehicle, to see the emblazoned marking of FOWL, and to watch as Scrooge fought for his life against his own flesh and blood. How long she had been an agent, nobody knew. How long she had been planning to kill her brother was also unknown. They had been out of contact for decades. But when she had aimed the barrel of that gun right between his eyes, she knew that he had acted only on pure instinct to defend himself. Otherwise, he never could have allowed himself to hurt her. He would have sooner died.

She sighed as she picked up yet another cold, untouched platter from in front of the doorway. She really couldn't let this go on any longer. 

Stepping back into the kitchen and dropping it into the bin, she startled a little at Duckworth's sudden notable presence in the room. He looked concerningly ruffled, so she for once gave him her full attention. An uneasy sensation struck her gut. "Is something wrong?"

"I sense..." Duckworth tugged at his collar, frowning. "Something is amiss. Tell me, why has the hot water been running for at least an hour now?"

She gave him an odd look. "...How should i know? I only used the water to heat the kettle for Mr McDuck's tea, which..." she sighed. "Surprise surprise, he didn't deign touching. I really should stop expecting better."

"Bentina." the dog snapped, and she flinched at his urgent tone. "I truly do feel that something is very wrong. I think that we need to go and check on him"

She could only trust his judgement. How could she not? Perhaps they had never gotten along, but she knew his mind was sharp, even if his tongue was ever sharper, much to her chagrin. If he sensed something was wrong, she would follow him. His instincts never usually led them astray.

When she knocked on Scrooge's door, she was met with silence. When she hit it several times, louder, there was still no response. Well then, that was concerning. Whenever she persisted he always spoke up to tell her to leave him be.

When Duckworth asked her to break down the door, insisting that he knew that something, somehow, was terribly off, she obliged. She could pay to replace it later.

What she had expected was to find Scrooge doing his usual - lying despondant in bed, or perhaps more destructively, tearing out his own feathers and yelling at nothing in particular. 

She hadn't expected to find him at the sink, blood staining the basin, boiling water steaming the room to a nearly unbearable heat, the windows fogged, the mirrors fogged, and _oh god how could there be so much blood?_

It took both of them to pull him forcibly back, and Beakley had to stop him from mutilating his hands more as Duckworth hurried to turn off the water. The bill would be astronomical, but that was the least of anyone's concerns right now.

"Blood" he gasped in her arms as she screamed at Duckworth to get the salve and gauze, and she turned shocked eyes to his own haunted ones. "Blood"

"I know" she muttered, frowning weakly. "You've done a lot to yourself. Have you even noticed?"

But he was seeing through her, looking at some point beyond, eyes misted over. "Her blood. I - her blood. Her blood is still - i can still see - so much blood-"

"Your blood" she assured him weakly. "Your blood. Not hers. Not anymore."

He passed out in her arms, and they forced his hand under the cold tap this time. He didn't even stir.

"We should take him to the hospital" she murmered later.

"The blood wasn't from the burns, he had simply scrubbed himself raw trying to remove the visions of his sister's blood" Duckworth responded cooly, and her eye twitched.

"I didn't mean to get his hands treated for severe burns you twit, i meant for his mind. I can't fathom what i just saw."

"The master would never consent to that."

She deflated. "I am aware. Trying to convince that man to go to therapy would have the same effect as screaming into the abyss."

He chuckled, though it was dry and devoid of any true humour. "He is extremely stubborn, even, or especially, to his own detriment."

Her resolve tightened. "We'll have to keep a closer eye on him from now on. I am not going to let that happen again."

His gaze turned to one of steel. "Nor will i."

Somewhere, in a bunker miles undergound, Hortense McDuck allowed another FOWL operative to check up on her bullet wound, wincing as the scalpel poked at the flesh before turning her gaze to the hitlist in her book.

Scrooge McDuck.

Failed.

Closing her eyes, she made no more sound as anaesthetic was injected and she was laid back onto the operation table.


	3. The Spear of Selene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notable trigger warning for self harm here. The next part won't be nearly this heavy.  
> Please consider leaving a comment! They're hugely beneficial to writing motivation!

She was gone.

Just like that, she was gone.

Scrooge took a step back from the terminal, mind blank with shock. She was gone. He'd killed her. He'd-

No!

His fist slammed against the moniter, seething at the words on it. There had to be a way. He couldn't accept this. He wouldn't accept it. There was no way he would allow himself to be his dau- his niece's killer.

The night sky outside taunted him, bright and twinkling but void of the spacecraft. The moon shone down in mockery, bathing him in pale white, illuminating his failure. Someone, or a few, ran in, shouting and yelling and asking him what had happened. When he opened his mouth to reply, he found he had no words.

He hated that his shoulders were heaving, that his hands were trembling terribly, that his eyes were stinging bitterly. It hadn't sunk in, and he refused to let it.

He would get her back.

\---

Donald left. 

Scrooge let him go.

\---

Was the money bin safe to jump into anymore? Not that he wanted to, but...

There had been a break in the search, just for a few hours, just so everyone could decompress. He had hated it - the silence left him alone with himself. He wanted to be in the communications room with the cluster of voices too dinny to hear himself speak, to hear the voices of those brave enough to venture out after his niece speak through his earpiece, to inform him of their success or failure. With Gyro as he engineered and designed more and more rockets, more and more chances, to watch the fires blaze into the sky as those rockets set off.

The rockets ran on gold. They didn't have enough time to rework them.

His bin was looking a little drained. He found he didn't care. Couldn't. 

There was a biting emptiness that hadn't been there before in his chest, that spread the further he was alone, quiet, not working. So he pulled himself up, sleep deprived and food deprived and nearly too dizzy to walk as a natural result of combining both of those defecits, and made his way back to his office.

He needed to keep his brain occupied, else he felt he might go insane.

\---

Had the boys hatched by now?

\---

They pulled him back, and he would have otherwise been humiliated by the protests that he screamed out, but he was desperate, so, so desperate. They couldn't stop him now, they couldn't, they had _no_ idea if he was any closer or not, or if the next rocket would be the successful one that found her, they didn't know that this search was the only thing keeping him intact. The only thing keeping him alive.

Normally, he could have pushed them off. As he was, on 3 hours of sleep in as many days and hamstrung by hsyteria, they found it simple to restrain him.

A week later, the search was called off entirely. They told him he would have run himself into the ground if he continued, along with his business.

He rather liked the idea of being in the ground right now, but wisely didn't voice that thought.

Work was sent to him the same as always, the sun still passed in the sky, schedules were re-set and plans were made for future investments and other business matters. The people of Duckburg went about their days, milling about, clueless that Scrooge McDuck was still trapped in time.

Instead of merely being a common visitor, Beakley moved in, and began working for him. She stated it was because in his depression he was letting the manor become a mess, but they both knew she really just wanted to make sure he wouldn't do anything stupid.

\---

It was their 1st birthday now, wasn't it?

He tried, once, to call Donald's phone.

It didn't pick up. 

He never tried again.

\---

There was something delightful in having control after a year of anything but.

He withdrew from food, and took power from the way that his body begged him to eat. He withdrew from sleep, and enjoyed that despite the pounding of his head and the weakness in his limbs he was able to force himself awake. He struck himself, and took reprieve in the short moment of clarity the pain gave him before it ebbed away.

The trouble was that he had two very meddlesome ~~friends~~ houseworkers that refused to really let him get away with either of those former habits, and the latter he found was becoming increasingly insufficient. He needed more, and more, until he was damaging himself up to the point of limping, something Duckworth noticed immediately. 

Eventually, he took a blade to his arms.

\---

He remembered Della and Donald's birthdays, still, along with the triplets'. Every time they came by, he would regress. Trapped once again in time, the day he lost both of them, the day he lost his chance to ever see his great nephews.

On those days, he wasn't able to get out of bed.

\---

Beakley brought her granddaughter into the mansion under the established condition that she was not allowed to bother him, and in the following months Duckworth died.

Another one. Logically, Scrooge knew Duckworth had been getting on in his age anyway, that this was inevitable. Emotionally, he wondered if he was just doomed to get everyone around him killed.

He began layering bandages under his sleeves, taking greater pains to hide what he was doing to himself. It helped him stay in check, fake a calm and unbothered façade, stern and cold and miserly. Nothing to be pitied or babied.

He was _fine._

Beakley clearly didn't think similarly. His ears still rang years later at the way she had shouted at him when she finally saw the scars.

He'd tried several attempts on his life over the duration of those early years, all unsuccessful. Beakley wasn't a spy for nothing, he supposed. He resented her for it, a little.

Several attempts were made to drop his bad habit, and were... shaky in their success. He was genuinely reliant now, desperate, and eventually he took solace in that he was better than before, if not cured. They were shallower, fewer, smaller.

It was the best he could do for himself without succumbing to the thoughts that led him to the bathroom with an empty bottle of pills, and Beakley must have recognized this, because she stopped haranguing him after a while.

Still, she gave him cleaning materials, and even helped him bandage himself on those awful occasions that he slipped and went deeper, and that was probably the best she knew to do anymore.

He did want to stop, though. God forbid he set a bad example for her granddaughter, even as little as he encountered her.

\---

He stared at a photo of before, eyes trailing over the smiling faces, and sighed. 

7 years, now.

He wondered if he would be trapped like this forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm up to my usual angsty bs, though this time it isn't immediately apparent. Muahahaha.
> 
> Any comments or kudos much appreciated. Have a good day! <3


End file.
